Friday, October 05, 2007

Dang, Dang and Double Dang

To my deep regret, the Western Standard has decided to stop publishing our print edition.

It's a purely financial decision. Even though our advertising revenues were stronger than ever, with marquee brands like GM, Mazda, BMW and Air Canada filling our pages, and even though we had the most loyal subscribers in the business, with an unheard-of 80% renewal rate, we just weren't close enough to profit.

Over the course of those 82 issues we printed 150 million pages of great conservative news and views, plus 40 million page views on our website, plus hundreds of hours on our various radio shows. We were also truly national -- with 20% of our readers in Ontario, and 19% in B.C. Those are impressive numbers, but it was the independent, tell-it-like-it-is quality that I'll remember.

Thank you to our entire extended family -- staff, subscribers and investors for an amazing project, the effects of which will continue to echo for years to come.

Just to answer your question on Shotgun, but "diversity in media" doesn't mean we need wingnuts with set & paid agendas posing as fact providers. Media should report facts and inform the public, regardless of the impact the truth has on their bottom line.

Magazines have become a very tough racket in recent years. Circulation rates have been crashing, just as they have with newspapers. (A related phenomenon has been a drop in ratings for the 6 o'clock news. Virtually no one under 40 cares about the evening news anymore due to the 'net and 24 hour news stations.)

If you are an activist on any side of the spectrum, there is a lot more instant gratification online than there is in waiting for a magazine to arrive in your mailbox. If Macleans didn't have such deep pocketed and patient owners, it would have gone under already as well.

This BCer is sorry to see the demise of Ezra's newsmagazine. Ezra lost a lot of good people and it seemed that when Libin exited the writing was on the wall. We'll miss O'Niell and of course the mighty mighty Steynisms.